6f6e57cb32
Prior to this CL, popping up a new window involved two renderer->browser IPC's: CreateNewWindow(), which is sync; and ShowCreatedWindow(), which is not sync. In addition to the linked bug, this arrangement requires some awkward architecture in the window-creating code. This CL combines the two IPC's into a single sync IPC. There are a few failure scenarios that currently prevent ShowCreatedWindow() from running after CreateNewWindow(); but those failure conditions are known to the browser at the time the reply to CreateNewWindow() is sent, so the browser code can act accordingly. The new behavior is behind an enabled-by-default feature flag, to give it an easy kill switch in case of breakage. Bug: chromium:41099297 Change-Id: I0c67de461d0f646085e13cab25114cfe1b150139 Reviewed-on: https://chromium-review.googlesource.com/c/chromium/src/+/6343761 Reviewed-by: David Trainor <dtrainor@chromium.org> Commit-Queue: Stefan Zager <szager@chromium.org> Reviewed-by: Alex Moshchuk <alexmos@chromium.org> Cr-Commit-Position: refs/heads/main@{#1435113}
Headless Chromium
Headless Chromium allows running Chromium in a headless/server environment. Expected use cases include loading web pages, extracting metadata (e.g., the DOM) and generating bitmaps from page contents -- using all the modern web platform features provided by Chromium and Blink.
As of M118, precompiled headless_shell binaries are available for download
under the name chrome-headless-shell via Chrome for Testing
infrastructure.
As of M132, headless shell functionality is no longer part of
the Chrome binary, so --headless=old has no effect.
If you are using old Headless functionality you should
now migrate to chrome-headless-shell.
Read more.
There are two ways to use Headless Chromium:
Usage via the DevTools remote debugging protocol
- Start Chrome in headless mode using the
--headlesscommand line flag:
$ chrome --headless --remote-debugging-port=9222 https://chromium.org/
- Navigate to
chrome://inspect/in another instance of Chrome.
Usage from Node.js
For example, the chrome-remote-interface Node.js package can be used to extract a page's DOM like this:
const CDP = require('chrome-remote-interface');
(async () => {
let client;
try {
// Connect to browser
client = await CDP();
// Extract used DevTools domains.
const {Page, Runtime} = client;
// Enable events on domains we are interested in.
await Page.enable();
await Page.navigate({url: 'https://example.com'});
await Page.loadEventFired();
// Evaluate outerHTML after page has loaded.
const expression = {expression: 'document.body.outerHTML'};
const { result } = await Runtime.evaluate(expression);
console.log(result.value);
} catch (err) {
console.error('Cannot connect to browser:', err);
} finally {
if (client) {
await client.close();
}
}
})();
Alternatvely, the Puppeteer Node.js package can be used to communicate with headless, for example:
import puppeteer from 'puppeteer';
(async () => {
const browser = await puppeteer.launch({headless: 'shell'});
const page = await browser.newPage();
await page.goto('https://example.com');
const title = await page.evaluate(() => document.title);
console.log(title);
await browser.close();
})();
Resources and Documentation
Mailing list: headless-dev@chromium.org
Bug tracker: Internals>Headless
File a new bug (bit.ly/2pP6SBb)
- Runtime headless mode on Windows OS
- BeginFrame sequence numbers + acknowledgements
- Deterministic page loading for Blink
- Crash dumps for Headless Chrome
- Runtime headless mode for Chrome
- Virtual Time in Blink
- Headless Chrome architecture (Design Doc)
- Session isolation in Headless Chrome
- Headless Chrome mojo service
- Controlling BeginFrame through DevTools
- Viewport bounds and scale for screenshots
- BlinkOn 6 presentation slides